


making mountains out of concaves

by goinghost



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, TAZ Big Bang 2018, The Adventure Bang 2018, barry's called the lover for a reason folks, not all stolen century but a lot of it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: Hundreds of years after the Day of Story and Song, when all that is left of the Seven Birds is two ghosts maintaining the balance between life and death, people still talk of the Lover.---Barry loves. Lup lives. People die sometimes. But no one lets go.





	making mountains out of concaves

**Author's Note:**

> here it is! been sitting on this fic since june so that i can post it for the taz bang! it's probably my favorite fic i've ever written, and definitely the longest fic i've written. a lot of love went into this baby, and i got a lot of support from people. thanks to the taz bang discord, my lovely girlfriend, my wonderful artists, and my beta! a link to the art will be posted in the end notes so you can go and reblog it on tumblr! 
> 
> this is based mostly around my extensive headcanons for barry and i had a lot of fun exploring them, i hope you have fun reading them! 
> 
> title from the song 'infinitesimal' by mother mother! 
> 
> WARNING there is brief suicidal ideation (nothing explicit) and a brief moment of a type of self harm near the end. starts at "He hiccuped and..." and ends at "Barry breathed heavily and..." also lots of death in general, it is the stolen century after all

Hundreds of years after the Day of Story and Song, when all that is left of the Seven Birds is two ghosts maintaining the balance between life and death, people still talk of the Lover.

They talk of all of them, it’s hard to forget the beings who saved countless realities, who lived and died for a century protecting the natural order of things, who fought heroically against a foe most could not comprehend.

(Who always kept plants growing in his beard; who was lactose-intolerant but ate ice cream like a fiend; who used the name “Greg” like a curse; who accidentally made it so that everything tasted like gogurt for a year; who cried at the sight of newborn puppies; who twirled his moustache when he was thinking; who wrote _everything—_ no matter how silly or small—down.)

But in a world rescued by the love of a family, protected by the love of two liches, thriving with the love of existence, people talk of the Lover.

  

[ID: A panel of five silhouettes with two skeletons in red robes in the middle. The five silhouettes have X's across them. A panel of the world split in half, one side meant to resemble the Hunger, with two red robed figures standing over it. The text reads "Hundreds of years after the Day of Story and Song, when all that is left of the Seven Birds is two ghosts maintaining the balance between life and death, people still talk of the Lover." END ID]

* * *

 

Barry coughed nervously, pushing a hand through his shaggy hair. It never got too long, not in a year, so he rarely had motivation to cut it. (And Lup told him she liked the way it fell across his eyes in cycle 7, one night when they were trying to decipher the chemical makeup of a type of rock that glowed softly that the locals called “Moonstone”)

He was standing in the dining area of the Starblaster, facing his crew, Magnus and Lup at his side. They’d gone on a recon mission the day before, investigating the warring tribes in an enormous forest of trees taller than the skyscrapers back home. As far as they could tell, the actual reasons for the war were arbitrary, each side believing the other was responsible for the split of the tribes centuries ago. Everyone here was a dragonborn, which left Barry with a whole lot of questions about why the dragons and humanoids that they were supposedly descended from no longer inhabited this planet. Of course there’s only so much information you can glean from invisibly listening into war councils being held in a language you can barely understand (he’d taken Draconic in undergrad, because he’d needed the extra elective credit, but it’d been a while.)

Lup had said, “They’ve got this idea that the Light is a weapon. Wanna blow each other up with it.”

Merle asked, “Can they?” at the same time that Davenport asked, “Have they found it?”

“No,” Barry said, “It’s not a weapon, we know that much.” But his voice shook a bit. There was so much they hadn’t figured out about the Light despite the fact that they were 18 years into it, so much that they hadn’t figured out about the Hunger.

“And we don’t think they’ve found it,” Lup added, “which means it probably didn’t land anywhere in the forest.”

Davenport pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “So we’re wasting our time here.” He gestured to the room, “Be ready to take off, maybe check out that mountain range we passed on our way in. We’re in the air in an hour.”

Barry opened his mouth before he really knew what he was doing, maybe to protest, but Lup beat him to it. She shook her head firmly, “No can do, Cap’n’port. We can’t leave them like this. If they keep fighting any longer, they’re gonna wipe themselves out.”

“Lup—”

“We talked about this,” she said, “As far as we know, these are the only two civilizations on the planet. What’s the point of saving them from the Hunger if they’ll all be dead before the year’s out anyway.”

“But if we don’t find the Light, this entire planar system is gone, not just this planet.” Lup and Davenport stared at each other, having some kind of battle of wills. Barry honestly wasn’t sure who would win. Lup was stubborn, but Davenport was a high-ranking military official. You didn’t get a position as the captain on the first ever inter-planar exploratory mission by backing down. The clock in the kitchen ticked as the seconds went by, neither so much as twitching an eye. Barry was starting to sweat when Davenport finally said, “Fine.” He sighed again, “Lup, you and—I assume—Taako can stay here and work with the tribes on some kind of peace accords or something. Everyone else—”

“I’m staying too,” Magnus piped up. “Getting in the middle of a civil war? They’re gonna need some protection.”

Davenport groaned, “Cool and fun. Magnus, Lup, and Taako will stay here. Lucretia, Merle, Barry, and I will search for the Light in the mountains. Unless anyone has any further protests?”

And here it was, the perfect chance for Barry to offer his help. On their recon mission they’d discovered that blue was a sacred color to the people of the forest, something to do with a myth about a blue dragon that had saved their people from a terrible storm dating back to before the tribes had split. His presence, what with the blue eyes and the blue jeans and the name, would probably be auspicious, make them more trustworthy to both sides, maybe prevent the dragonborn from outright killing them all when they show up unarmed to discuss negotiations.

But Barry also knew that, as their head science officer on this mission, the Light took priority. He knew that Lup, Magnus, and Taako could handle themselves in a fight against a people that didn’t know any magic beyond cantrips, even if some of them could breathe ice or fire. He knew that Taako had definitely brought along a blue-themed outfit. He knew that he’d missed the big moral dilemma last cycle and he’d been _glad_ when they’d explained what had happened before Lup did her big speech, he’d been _relieved_ that he hadn’t had to make that choice. What if something similar happened in the peace talks? Could Barry Bluejeans really be counted on to make a decision that affected the lives of hundreds of people when he couldn’t even decide if he had a crush on his coworker—his friend—or not?

So he stayed silent and waved awkwardly to Lup from the deck of the Starblaster an hour later as they lifted off into the canopy, blushing from head to toe at the wink she threw his way before she, Taako, and Magnus turned into the dense forest and started making their way to the center.

And if he refused to rest until they found the Light two weeks later—bringing it back to the forest just in time to see Lup drop the wand that she’d used to cast thaumaturgy so that her voice echoed across the designated no-man’s-land as the leaders from both tribes shook hands and then began kissing in front of the gathered crowd—well, everyone on the crew knew how Barry liked to throw himself into his work.

And if he spent too long staring at Lup as they descended into the clearing where the only living people on this planet were gathered, wondering what kissing her must be like, well, he was just watching the two dragonborn women who’d supposedly been at war with one another their entire lives go to town on each other just like everyone else was.

And if his heart skipped a beat as Lup started a round of cheers, smile twinkling in her eyes and a fist raised in the air triumphantly....he didn’t actually have a good explanation for that.

God, he was fucked.

 

* * *

 

There were days when Barry didn’t remember what emotion was like.

Or, well, not entirely true. Because he was made of it—of emotion, powered by a love that he could only remember in spurts, a love that felt all but lost. But he didn’t _feel_ like he should, sometimes. A person got angry; a person felt happiness; a person was scared when the threat of an all-consuming nightmare plane loomed dangerously overhead. But Barry was...off. Empty was the word for it.

He was a ghost in every sense of the word.

He didn’t leave the cave. He didn’t need to eat, didn’t need sleep, didn’t have legs to stretch. There didn’t seem to be any point to leaving the pod and all of his research unguarded (and it did occur to him that he could set wards, lay magical traps powerful enough to blast anyone within a mile radius straight to the astral plane, but magic like that could get the attention of a certain leader of a secret memory-wiping organization on a secret moonbase with a secret past. Or maybe he just didn’t want to go outside.)

So for months he stayed inside his damp cave, watching a body he’d only just started feeling comfortable in in the last twenty years regrow, lifeless but breathing in a tank of green fluid. For all intents and purposes, empty, waiting for a soul. He knew that feeling. It seemed waiting was the only thing Barry did anymore.

God, if Lup could see him now. Barry knew what she’d say, knew the way she would urge him to stop seeing himself in what’s essentially a corpse, knew she would pretend she could hold his spectral hand and lead him out of his little base of operations, make him take her out to the nearest village and people-watch, play little magic tricks on passing villagers, laugh with him.

Barry would give anything to hear Lup’s laugh right about now.

 

* * *

 

 

“You ever been in love, Barry?”

Barry coughed violently, arching up from his position on the couch where he’d been laying with Lup, leaning against each other after a long day (and most of the night going through the early morning of the next day) stuck in the lab. The couch was a recent addition to the dim workspace where Barry practically lived nowadays; it was only added a few cycles ago when it became clear that the strange back problems Barry kept experiencing year after year were due to him spending every night sleeping at his desk. But he couldn’t help it if there were still so many things to learn, so many research projects to complete. The properties of the different planar systems they encountered were fascinating, things no one from their world could ever conceive. And Barry only had a year to find out as much as possible before the plane was either consumed or they had left it behind.

Of course, this cycle was different. Davenport was getting antsy. Cycle 24 and they had yet to find a proper way to track the Light. Barry was all but under ship arrest to finally accomplish some modicum of progress. Lup helped when she could, when she and Taako weren’t needed elsewhere.

Today (and tonight and the early morning of the next day) was one of those times. She’d managed to convince Barry to take a power nap with her on the couch while she meditated, but try as he might, Barry couldn’t fall asleep. Apparently Lup couldn’t either.

She was still expecting an answer, coughing aside. He didn’t know what to say, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get away with silence. “I—uh—” honesty was the best policy, right? She probably wouldn’t pry too much. Lup respected people’s privacy because she expected people to respect her own. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Hmm.”

And how the fuck was he supposed to respond to that? “Uh—you?” He coughed again, “I mean, have you? Been in love? Ever?” God, why did he ask _that?_

Barry couldn’t see her face, but he heard the smile when she said, “Who knows? Been outta the game for a while. But maybe.”

“Oh.”

Lup sighed into him, her head shifting on his shoulder. They were so close, but it wasn’t anything Barry wasn’t used to at this point. Travel and die and regenerate with someone for 24 years and you become accustomed to a certain level of closeness. That didn’t stop Barry’s face from heating up, didn’t stop the electricity that sparked under his skin every time Lup changed positions under the blanket that they were sharing.

“A part of me never thought I would.”

“Huh?”

Lup shrugged against his side. “I always thought, ‘Who needs love? I’ve got Taako.’ It didn’t—there was no reason for anything else.” She held up a hand from under the blanket and started flicking her fingers as flames lit on the tips of her nails. “‘Course, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe...when we were famous from this mission and I had my PhD and Taako had his cooking show, you know, maybe something would happen.” The fire went out abruptly, “But you can see how well that plan went.”

Barry thought about all of the people he’d ever been in love with. Too many faces, too many names all blending together. Barry fell in love like breathing, like blinking, like his mother’s soft tone when she spoke about his father. He saw something in people’s eyes that he couldn’t get enough of. There was good there; there was liquid gold and cotton candy and fresh linens. There was a very cold lake on a very hot day. And Barry couldn’t resist it, falling head first into the arms of whoever would give him the time of day, whoever shared even a little bit of that good with him. Sometimes into whoever wouldn’t.

He thought about the way that Lup had looked laughing in the sunlight on the beach a few cycles ago. He thought about the way that Lup believed in good like no one Barry had ever met, with a ferocity that her life depended on. He thought about the way she smiled to herself when she’d figured something out, something soft but sharp and so uniquely her.

He thought about what he could tell her about love and plans and things going wrong.

Barry said, “Yeah...I know what you mean.” And tried his best to fall back asleep.

 

* * *

 

“Knock knock, Barold,” he heard a singsong voice call out from his tangled up position on his bed.

Barry stumbled awake to open the door, surprised to find Taako inspecting his nails with a disinterested smirk on his face. “Taako? Can I—uh—can I help you?”

Taako sighed very dramatically, “Apparently I owe you an apology or something. For acting rationally in a crisis like _losing my sister—”_ he practically shouted this last part down the hallway, “So, sorry, I guess. Or whatever.”

“Oh.” Barry went to adjust his glasses before realizing that they were still on the desk by his bed. “Did Lup put you up to this?”

“She may have had a hand,” Taako drawled. A loud cough came from further down the hall, to which Taako exclaimed, “I did it already, Lulu, what more do you want?” Barry couldn’t see anything really, but something happened to make Taako say in a low voice, “Can I come in?”

Barry stepped aside and gestured into his room, “Y-yeah, sure thing.”

The rooms on the Starblaster were small, barely bigger than the shoebox apartment Barry’d had for most of his college days. It maximized space while still giving each of the crew their own place. IPRE had worried about a lack of privacy and personal space on a two month mission to Gods know where with them potentially being cooped up together for weeks at a time. Now, ten years into their expedition, personal space became less about strict boundaries and more about not letting the others see your breakdowns (at least in Barry’s case).

Taako whistled as soon as he crossed the threshold, eyes going wide at the clutter, “What’s with the mess? Didn’t your mother teach you how to pick up after yourself, Barold?”

“I don’t—I spend most of my time in the lab so cleaning isn’t really a priority.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Taako fished out his wand and used it to Levitate a few old food containers from Cycle 7 out of Barry’s desk chair, “Yeesh.”

Barry rolled his eyes, “Did you come into my room just to criticize my cleaning habits?”

“No,” Taako’s turn to roll his eyes. “I _already did what I came for!”_ He shouted emphatically at the closed door. There was a loud knocking sound and a muffled shout of, _Do it right!_ Taako’s left ear twitched like a cow’s flicking away a fly.

“Listen, Taako, you don’t have to—”

“No, she’ll never let me hear the end of it if I don’t.”

“Okay, but—”

“Just listen, Bluejeans.” Taako collapsed into Barry’s desk chair, “I guess what I said last cycle was kind of...unfair. Maybe.”

“Yeah...maybe.”

“And, like, if I wasn’t so distraught from the whole shitfest that was that night, I definitely wouldn’t have said it.”

“I know that,” Barry said. “Taako, We’ve known each other for ten years. I know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, “That was a hard cycle. Lup dying...was hard. For all of us. Can’t imagine what it was like for you.”

“Barry,” and it didn’t escape his notice that it was the first time Taako had said his actual name. “It was too much. I shouldn’t’ve done it. Sorry.”

“Taako…”

“It’s whatever, dude!” Taako said shrilly. Then he cleared his throat, “It’s whatever. We’re fine and I did what Lup wanted and now,” he got up and opened the door, “ _everything is cool!”_ he shouted down the hallway.

“Yeah. Everything’s cool,” Barry answered absently as Taako _hrumphed_ out of his room, mumbling about the unfairness of sisters all the while (but Barry could tell that it was mostly for show).

“Hmm,” he said to himself.

Then he went back to bed.

 

* * *

 

Barry knew this would happen eventually.

Cycle 4, almost half a decade into their journey, and here he was, dying for the first time.

This cycle was the most violent they’d had so far. War-mongering gnomes who’d taken control of all of the planet’s resources refused to give them the time of day, actively trying to sabotage the crew of the Starblaster any way they could. They’d already broken onto the ship twice and stolen a lot of their food stores.

Captain Davenport was the only one having any kind of luck with peace negotiations, so he was gone practically all the time, leading to an absence of traditional leadership that they hadn’t had before. Captain Davenport (Cap’n’port, as Magnus continued to insist on calling him) ran a tight ship, but as the years went on and it became clear that their mission was never going to return to IPRE-standard, he’d laxed on the rules a bit. This cycle he’d delegated most of his responsibilities to Merle and Lucretia, stuck meeting with the gnomish leaders for days and weeks on end as he tried to find a way to get the Light.

Barry wasn’t complaining about not being one of the people chosen as temporary captain. He wasn’t built for leadership and he especially wasn’t built to deal with organizing all of the stealth missions they’d had to make to steal food and water from the gnomes. No, Barry was more than comfortable hanging back and studying the strange purple-sand lakes that they’d only just managed to negotiate a way to access.

Of course, some of the guards of the lake must not have gotten the message.

He’d been so excited to get a chance to check out the sand that he hadn’t bothered to check with Captain Davenport that everyone was informed of the new arrangement. Barry just packed up all of the equipment he could carry and hiked on over to the nearest body of water.

As he approached, it became clear that he’d made a mistake.

Someone shouted something at him in Gnomish that he didn’t understand (he’d picked up a few phrases from Captain  Davenport but not enough to be fluent), and when he turned around to ask for clarification, a crossbow bolt had wedged itself between his shoulder blades.

Barry was not a fighter. He’d considered it, in undergrad. He was big, had a lot of mass, figured he could put it all to use protecting people. He took a few defense classes and decided that his true passion lie with the arcane sciences and never looked back. But Barry was not a fighter. He was a scientist. He didn’t get hit, he stayed on the sidelines. He wasn’t exactly bursting with hit points.

So a crossbow bolt to the spine was enough to take him down.

And down he went. He was heavy with equipment and pain, falling to his knees on the dirt path, dripping blood. He was light-headed and losing feeling in his limbs fast, but not fast enough to make the pain bearable.

Foggily, he saw figures approaching him, but he wasn’t thinking about the fact that they would definitely raid his corpse and he was going to have to pray they go to another scientifically advanced plane soon so that he could load up on equipment. He wasn’t even thinking about the faces of the Starblaster crew when he inevitably didn’t come back to the ship.

(Well, he was. Just a little. Barry had a lot of room in his heart for people, usually in relationships not reciprocated, and spending as much time with his crew as he was was a surefire way to earn them a top spot in Barry’s thoughts.)

No, Barry was thinking about when he was 18 and the world felt like it was ending every single day but he didn’t do anything about it because all he could think about was his mother and his sisters. He was thinking about when he graduated and he actually wanted a spot in the future for the first time in a very long time. He was thinking about when the world really did end and what little he could do about it except realize that he _didn’t want it to._

And so he lay on the ground, paralyzed and panting, _dying_ and not wanting to.

At least he was coming back.

 

* * *

 

Barry was the first one there.

Excluding the captain of course. From the bags under his eyes, Barry would’ve guessed Captain Davenport had been there for hours. _Weird,_ he thought, _never seen a tired gnome before._ And then he thought, _Whoa, Bluejeans, cool it on the borderline-specism. You’re working with a mixed-race crew for the next two months_.

He shuffled nervously into the conference room that would serve as the meeting place for the crew of the Institute’s first ever inter-planar mission. He’d read everyone’s file, of course. He could probably put a name to a face when the people he’d be spending the next few months with arrived in the next 20 minutes or so (Barry had a habit of letting his anxiety get the best of him and arriving _too_ early on most occasions.)

Captain Davenport looked up when he walked in and gave him a nod, which would have looked a lot cooler and more leader-like if the bags under his eyes didn’t betray his exhaustion. Barry didn’t seem to be the only one who couldn’t sleep.

He cleared his throat, “Hey—hello, sir.”

“Good morning, Hallwinter.”

Barry startled. He hadn’t heard someone call him Hallwinter since high school. He’d been Bluejeans since he left the house. When he’d started undergrad, a few guys started calling him Barry Bluejeans as a maybe-not-so-friendly nickname and it had stuck. Until that moment, he’d been convinced it was somewhere in his file. “Morning.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before the door opened. In walked a dwarven man with flowers dotting his gnarly-looking beard. He had round glasses perched on his round nose and a warm smile. _Merle Highchurch_ , Barry’s brain supplied. “Dav!” He walked straight past Barry and gave Captain Davenport a nudge, “Or should I say Captain! Good to see ya again!”

Captain Davenport’s face broke into a tiny smile. It was a lot less intimidating than his serious face. “Nice seeing you too, Merle.”

“When I heard you were in charge of this shindig I got so giddy. This expedition is gonna be a wonderful thing, I can tell,” Merle winked at him. He seemed to finally notice Barry and just continued smiling, “You’re that human guy, the scientist. Silvain Summer-something.”

“Barry, actually,” he supplied, “Hallwinter.”

Merle looked confused and consulted his hand, “I coulda sworn it started with an ‘S’...”

“It’s a—uh—it’s a nickname.”

“Oh, well, good to meet’cha, Barry, I’m Merle.” He held out his hand to shake and then pulled Barry into a hug that surprised him.

Merle went back to ignoring him and conversing with Captain Davenport as Barry shuffled his feet some more.

He was drifting to sleep as the sounds of Merle’s voice droned on when two identical looking elves walked—or, really, strut—into the room. They both had a magnetic sort of beauty about them and sandy-colored freckles dotting their brown skin. One of them was a man with an IPRE-red skirt, large gold hoop earrings, and a crop top that said “TAAKO”. The other was a woman wearing lace-up combat boots, high-waisted IPRE-red pants, and a crop top that said “LUP”. Barry figured that these were the twins. He remembered hearing from someone that the mission was originally only supposed to have six people, but Taako and Lup refused to go without the other and so IPRE decided to take them both. Besides that story, the twins were something of legends around the IPRE campus, known for breaking hearts, rules, and magical laws of existence (though that last one was probably just a rumor. Probably.)

Presumably-Lup practically sang in a lilting voice, “Party’s here. Who’s ready for some inter-planar magical mayhem?”

Taako glanced at Captain Davenport, “You ready, Cap? Dwarf guy?”

“Highchurch,” Lup supplied.

Taako nodded, “Or how ‘bout you, uh—” he gave Barry a onceover, “Not beefy enough to be Burnsides so I’m guessing Hallwinter?”

“It’s—you can call me Barry.”

“And that came from Sildar? Man, human names are _we-ei-rd_ ,” Taako gave the word a few extra syllables.

“Play nice, Koko,” Lup smiled at Barry and he felt like his feet were melting into the floor. His entire face and neck were splotchily red at this point no doubt. “Bluejeans doesn’t look like he needs anymore outside torment.”

Just when he thought he’d escaped his ill-gotten nickname, it was back. “It’s fine but—just Barry is fine.”

“Just Barry Bluejeans,” Taako laughed high and sharp, like the raised blade of a guillotine.

“That’s not—okay.” He sighed. “Okay.”

Taako opened his mouth like he was going to say something else just as the door slammed open against the wall and a muscular human man in a tattered red bandana, tank top, and cargo shorts burst into the room looking like he just ran a marathon, “I’m not late!” Magnus Burnsides shouted. Sure enough, the clock turned to the allotted meeting time right as he finished speaking.

“No,” Captain Davenport pinched the bridge of his nose, “You are not, but please quiet down. There are classes going on across the hall.”

“Oh,” Magnus stage-whispered, “Sure thing, Cap’n’port.”

“That’s not—okay,” he repeated unintentionally. “Is this going to be happening now?”

“Don’t know what you mean, my man,” Taako said, “Sounds like Mags just gave you a succinct portmanteau. Way better than whatever boring shit we were gonna call you.”

“But it’s not my—I have a title.”

“I _said_ ‘Cap’!” Magnus exclaimed defensively.

While they continued this argument (Merle joining in good naturedly), Lup sidled up to Barry, “If the Bluejeans thing really bothers you then I can call you by your name, no problem here,” she whispered. “I’ll even convince Taako to leave it alone.”

Barry startled, his glasses almost sliding off his face. He righted them, “Don’t worry. Funnily enough, Bluejeans was my nickname in undergrad so I’m used to it.”

“Well, being used to something and liking it are two very different things, dude, so tell me which is it?”

“Oh.” He considered this for a moment, “It’s not so bad, better than being called Hallwinter all the time. We’re gonna be working closely for the next few months, right? So nicknames should be a thing? I guess?”

“Cool,” Lup said, “Nicknames are definitely a thing with me and Taako. Just look at him now.”

Barry glanced over and Taako was now standing on the big table in the middle with Magnus at his side. Magnus was in the midst of shouting, “Viva el Cap’n’port!” when the door opened once again.

A dark-skinned woman with close-cropped white hair entered the room. Barry recognized her as Lucretia. Her voice was deep and soft as she said, “I’m sorry I’m late. I was caught up—well, it’s not important.” She took in the scene of Captain Davenport angrily motioning for Taako and Magnus to get off the table with a laughing Merle beside him and Barry rubbing at his neck as red as a tomato while Lup elbowed him playfully. “What did I miss?”

[ID: Lucretia, Barry, Lup, and Taako all sit in chairs in a white-walled room. The window behind them shows that it's early morning. They are wearing the outfits described. Lucretia is sketching, Barry is watching Lup say something as Taako looks on lazily. END ID] 

* * *

 

The Starblaster’s bridge was cold.

Barry had a white-knuckled grip on the arm rests of his seat and it felt frozen under his hands, like the silver ship was made of ice. Distantly, he remembered that the metal would warm up once the bond engine really started kicking (love was warmth, after all), but they’d barely been in the air for a few minutes. Not enough time to produce the energy needed to keep everything nice and toasty.

But it was enough time to watch the world end.

That— _thing_. That black cloud, overbearing and overpowering in its might as it hung overhead and wrapped its tendrils around the only world Barry had ever known, the only world any of their people had ever known. It tore through the Institute like paper, scattering pieces of the place Barry had spent almost his entire adult life at. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing to the city that he grew up in. The Institute was a few hours away from Marlena Hallwinter’s home, but something told Barry that that didn’t make her safe.

The further into the air the Starblaster climbed, the worse the destruction appeared. It seemed the entire world was being consumed by this force and there was nothing they could do but run.

Barry thought of his mom while he tried to breathe. Barry thought of his sisters as tears ran down his cheeks. Davenport was yelling orders though the intercom, trying to contact the Institute and figure out what was going on, but Barry knew it was no use. He’d had nightmares like this, where an all-consuming blackness destroyed everything he held dear while he could do nothing.

They always ended the same way.

 

* * *

 

“Okay, this is gonna be untenable,” Taako blew a piece of hair out of his face and crossed his arms, “We can’t keep calling it _the thing_ or _the black cloud_ or _Voreman Mcgee_. It needs a name.”

Barry looked thoughtfully out a porthole of the Starblaster, tapping a pen to his chin. He, Taako, and Lup were going over what the recorded state could mean for them and reviewing what the big black thing did last year in the common room on the ship. Barry and Lup’s notes were laid out across a table that was usually used to play cards. Davenport and Merle were out getting as much information on the Light as they could. After the Power Bear fiasco, Magnus was on house arrest. He’d started knitting to find some way to occupy his time (the people of this world lived for color and expression so there was no problem getting yarn). Lucretia stayed behind too, she’d never been one for talking. She was curled up in the corner with her journal, sketching something or other.  “A name, huh?”

“Yeah, dog, something we can actually call it. Obviously we’re in it for the long haul as it seems right now, second go at this and all that, so we need to give it a handle before I have to keep referring to this thing as the nightmare that ate our planar system.”

“I like Voreman Mcgee,” Lup chimed in.

Magnus raised a hand from his position on the couch, working on a rainbow-patterned scarf. “I vote Voreman Mcgee too!”

“We are not calling it Voreman Mcgee,” Barry said, “We are giving it a scientific sounding name so that when we finally figure out how to defeat it and share our findings with whatever planar system we’re in they won’t immediately discredit us.”

“Well fine, what do you suggest, Mr. Scientist?” Lup teased.

Barry ran a hand through his hair, “I—uh, I don’t know. Cloud Zero?” He knew it was a bad idea as soon as he said it, but she was kind of right. He should’ve had something before he opened his mouth. God, he spent an entire year trying to convince the twins that he wasn’t an incompetent nerd and now this.

Taako let loose a bark of laughter, “Looks like Voreman Mcgee is winning, dude.”

And Lucretia actually spoke up, a rare occasion even after a year together. “Um, well…” she hesitated, “I’ve been calling it something else in my notes.”

“Oh?” Barry liked Lucretia. She was smart, maybe not in the ways of arcane sciences, but she had good instincts. He’d read passages from the journals that she was always writing in, and he could tell that she was very good at what she did. She’d earned her place on this mission through things as innocuous as translated interviews and sketches of nearly-bipedal deer and rabbits and boar. Barry liked Lucretia. He felt a kinship with her as someone else who prefered to wallflower at a party as opposed to the loud karaoke that the rest of the crew had favored at the Institute. He was genuinely impressed with how well she seemed to be dealing with the lengthening of their two month mission (Gods know he wasn’t dealing with it well himself. He’d left two younger sisters and a mother that he loved with all his heart back on their two-sunned planet). So, yes, Barry liked Lucretia, and he liked when she contributed to conversations. He wished she would do it more.

“I’ve been calling it…” She paused, gravitas dripping from her voice perhaps unintentionally, “the Hunger.”

 

* * *

 

It was a rough one.

Cycle 9. Race of bird people not unlike aarakocra that worshipped the Light. They’d become hostile almost immediately once the crew had made it clear that their intentions were to take it. Barry and Lup had been picked for a stealth mission to try to steal it. Lup because she was very good at Disguise Self and Barry because no one else had wanted to go (and while Barry is still denying his crush because he _doesn’t have one on his good friend and coworker, Lup_ , he didn’t want to sit this mission out.)

The whole thing looked like it would go off without a hitch. They’d Disguised themselves as the aarakocra and managed to make it into the government building with the Light locked away inside in the heart of a huge floating city. Lup had charmed every person they’d come across so far with nothing but a pretty smile and well-placed laughs; Barry wasn’t doing too bad himself, but he was still letting Lup do most of the talking. Of course, then the guards had started shittalking the crew of, “naked, wingless beasts” that were, “trying to steal something they could never understand, those dipshits.” Lup really seemed like she had it together up until they began laughing about the one with the pointy hat. She’d growled out some excuse for leaving the conversation, but the guards obviously didn’t believe her and, once they were suspicious, it wasn’t hard to poke holes in Barry and Lup’s story.

They’d quickly grabbed the Light and dashed, firing potshots at the incoming guards and Featherfalling to the surface of the planet. It was going pretty well all things considered.

And then Lup got hit.

It was some modified Magic Missile and it was bad—Lup doesn’t get to finish out the rest of the cycle bad. Barry couldn’t tell until they’d touched down and her body had fallen limply onto the soft, wet grass. Barry quickly realized that it was slick with her blood. He felt bile rise in his throat, but he tried doing what he could to help, taking off his shirt and pressing it against Lup’s wounds to staunch the blood flow. It didn’t do much. Barry knew things about healing and biology but mostly only as they related to necromancy, which wasn’t entirely useful at the moment.

She wasn’t conscious, didn’t wake up at all while Barry scrambled to try to fix her injuries in any way he could think. She died in his arms. It was her first death.

It was a rough one.

[ID: Barry is sitting over Lup, who is lying down dead in the grass. END ID] 

* * *

 

Going back to the Starblaster without Lup for the first time was...hard.

It was a lot of things, but all of that could be summed up as “hard”.

Magnus had been the first to see Barry walk through the clearing where the Starblaster was parked with the Light of Creation shining in his hands. It pulsed warmly with that energy they’d found that the Light carried, something powerful and full of _longing_. He’d whooped loudly and shouted for everyone to get down the gangplank because, “They got it! Mission: Impossible Stealth Disguise Power Turbo Action Style is a success!”

Barry almost— _almost_ —huffed out a laugh as he heard Davenport shout, “No one agreed to call it that!”

The rest of the crew’s voices cheered around him but he couldn’t help but feel empty. They were seven months into the cycle, which meant guarding the Light for five. Which meant no Lup for five _fucking_ months.

“Where is she?” Taako’s voice cut through the din of everyone else celebrating a successful mission. It was diamond-hard, sharp in a way that only the twins were. “Where’s Lup?”

Barry rubbed a hand across his face as he handed off the Light to Davenport. “She didn’t—didn’t make it, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“How.” It was barely a question.

“Got hit by some kind of Magic Missile. It did too much damage for me to fix and I—I don’t know any healing spells.”

“You don’t know fucking Spare the Dying? I’ve met kindergarteners who knew Spare the Dying!” Taako snapped. The venom in his voice took Barry by surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have. It _was_ his fault that Lup was dead. Taako’s always teased him, though it’s never gotten rougher than the stuff he heard in undergrad, of course he would be angry about his sister fucking _dying_.

“Taako, I tried, I’m sorry—”

“Oh he’s sorry!” Taako shouted, splaying his arms wide, “Well la-dee-fucking-da looks like Lup’s coming back to life because he’s sorry! Oh wait.” He snapped a hand in front of Barry’s face, “Newsflash, Bluejeans, but we’ve got another five months in this cycle and you just made sure that you’re cooking your own meals from now on. Have fun living off of fantasy ramen and burned coffee, you incompetent fuck!” And with a swish of his purple cape, he turned and stormed up the gangplank back onto the Starblaster.

 

* * *

 

Barry and Lup strolled out of the cave hand in hand, Barry blinking away happy tears as the sounds of applause followed them.

Every few seconds they would catch the other staring and burst out laughing from the sheer joy of it all. They’d done it. An entire planar system now knew about the love Barry Bluejeans had in his heart for Lup, the love that had increased exponentially since they’d first met in that conference room over 47 years ago. And Barry, normally anxious over every way he presented himself, couldn’t bring himself to care. Let them listen to the inevitability of 47 years of pining; let them celebrate the beauty of something as full as Lup’s heart. Today was for dancing and laughing and living. Today was for loving.

Today was for talking.

They came to a stop on the grassy lawn outside of the Legato Conservatory’s main music building, a place that had become a second home to them while writing a confession and a story all rolled into one. They held hands as they sat down. The grass made Barry’s legs itch in his dress jorts but he didn’t complain.

“So—” he started at the same time as Lup. They shared a laugh. “You go first,” he conceded after a bit.

“So,” Lup said, “that sure was...something.”

Barry chuckled, “You could say that.”

Lup shifted on the grass, tucking her legs under the skirt of her long red dress. She turned so that she was staring directly at Barry. “Look. This could very easily be something big and dramatic if we wanted it to be. A love confession for the ages. Something for Lucretia to write in her journals that will be remembered for time immemorial when all this shit has been dealt with.” Lup’s eyes flitted to their joined hands and then back to his face. “We could do that. Or we could do what we’ve known was coming for years now.”

For once, Barry’s voice came out smooth, “Yeah. I’d like that.”  

 

* * *

 

Barry was crying.

His hands, which were clutching his acceptance letter like a vice, were shaking. _Sildar Jerald Hallwinter_ , it read (and Barry even got over the instinct to cringe at the use of his full name), _we here at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration are excited to inform you that you have been accepted into our program..._ And Barry would admit that he’d blanked after that, zeroing in on the word _accepted_.

He’d made it. He’d fucking made it.

His mother came into the kitchen and saw his tear-stained red face and frowned. She put a comforting hand on his shoulder and muttered, “Oh, baby, it’s okay. There are other programs.” She rubbed circles into his back until he shook his head and shoved the letter into her open palm. She blinked owlishly at him, but skimmed it with wide eyes. “Oh, baby, you made it!” She all but shouted.

His sisters, Adaire and Adele, quickly poked their heads into the doorway to see what the noise was about and his mother pulled them into the kitchen with a smile, “He made it, girls! Barry is in the IPRE!”

Adaire _whooped_ and strangled him in a hug. Adele didn’t look as interested, but she was smiling softly and winked at him, so Barry knew she was happy for him.

And—maybe most importantly considering the way his brain usually worked— _he_ was happy for him. He’d done what would have been impossible for him just a few years back. He’d made it into IPRE with a necromancy degree! Him: Barry Hallwinter, with his dumb jeans and his even dumber nickname, had made it into IPRE. Gods. He’d literally never imagined this could happen.

His mother grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed, pulling him into another hug with Adele and Adaire. Barry and his family held onto each other and celebrated the impossible happening.

And for a long time, they didn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

Barry was crying.

He knew he shouldn’t be. He was a grown ass man; this was ridiculous. Barry had always been prone to crying over the stupidest things: his first C in a class, when his mother accidentally bought regular milk instead of almond milk, when Adaire stayed out too late without telling anyone where she was going and he and his mother and Adele were scrambling trying to find her.

And here he was, crying over being unable to crack the Light of Creation’s “code”.

It has been 11 years. That was more than a decade. By now, you’d think they would be closer to figuring out the exact properties of the Light, as well as a way to consistently track it more accurately than just the other side of the world, but nope! Here he was, sobbing his eyes out as quietly as he could down in the depths of the Starblaster’s (and really his and Lup’s for all that the others didn’t use it) lab.

He hiccuped and clutched at his throat, wondering what would happen if he just...stopped, however temporarily. Barry had died before, in the fourth cycle. He’d died and he was still here. (But still being here was not what he wanted).

He slammed his hands against the sides of his head, over and over again he drummed out an uneven rhythm against his ears, trying to force out whatever was stuck inside his brain that was making him like this. After a minute or so of aggressively boxing his ears, Barry breathed heavily and let out another loud sob that shook his shoulders and ached in his chest.

“Barry?”

And he froze, hiccuping once more. He’d recognized that voice anywhere, as much as he hated to admit it. Sure enough, when he turned around—wiping surreptitiously at his eyes while being painfully aware that he could do nothing for the redness in his cheeks or the bloodshot look of his face—there was Lup.

Her eyes were full of open concern, crinkling at the corners with a kindness that Barry didn’t feel he deserved at the moment. She walked over to where he was on his knees and outstretched a hand hesitantly. Barry blinked owlishly at her; he wasn’t used to seeing Lup hesitate with anything.

“Can I sit?”

“Y-yeah—uh, be my guest.” He cleared his throat and pat the cold, metal ground next to him.

She took a seat. She seemed to be debating something for a few minutes, chewing at her lip with that look Lup got on her face when she was concentrating. “You wanna...talk about it?” she said after a while.

Barry laughed roughly, “Not—not really. If I’m being honest.”

“Okay, yeah. Cool. You do you, babe.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but there was something heavy there.

Then Lup asked, “You want a hug?”

Barry laughed, but it was lighter this time, “That would—yes. Yeah.”

And Lup reached over and put her arms around Barry and Barry returned the favor.

And for a long time, they didn’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! comments fuel my soul and make my day! 
> 
> check out jamie (who drew the first piece) [here!](https://www.instagram.com/jamiethefilmkid/) and here's [bella's beautiful art!](https://bellart03.tumblr.com/post/179435736624/taz-bang-art-drawn-of-ghostzvne-s-beautiful) check out bella on tumblr [here!](https://bellart03.tumblr.com/)


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